The days of free apps seem to be slowly coming to a standstill. Recently, password manager LastPass announced that it’s drastically limiting the usefulness of its free app, and now Google has sent out emails confirming it’s ending its free unlimited photo storage policy:
Starting June 1, 2021, all new photos and videos are backed up in: High quality and Express quality* It will be included in the free 15GB storage that comes with your Google account, or any additional storage you may have purchased, as other Google services like Google Drive and Gmail already do.
While this isn’t a surprise – Google announced its new policy in November 2020 – a reminder of the impending storage shortage is still depressing. Of course, you can add as many “high-quality” photos as you want until June 1st, so if you’re planning to upload a lot of old photos, now is the time to do so. In the meantime, you may want to find out how much space you’re already using so you can tell if you need to upgrade. It’s not difficult and there are several ways to do it:
- go this pageand you’ll see a breakdown of how much storage you’ve used and how it’s split between Google Drive, Gmail, Google Photos, and your device backup. (Note: The appearance of the page may vary depending on the type of Google account you have.)
- You can also see how much storage you have left by going to your Google Drive page and looking at the Storage statistic shown at the bottom of the left column.
- Google has also created a page that estimates how long it will take before you need to increase your storage, based on your current usage. You can find here.
After the June 1 deadline has passed, Google says it will send reminders when you’re nearing your limit. It also aims to provide a tool to identify what it calls “dark, blurry, and unwanted content.”
Now that you know how much space you have left, you can try to figure out what you want to do next. If you’re approaching your limit, would you like to? pay Google for more storage? (Prices start at $1.99 per month for 100GB.) Found a different service to store your photos? It’s up to you.
One piece of advice: Before you do anything else, try to get rid of old, unwanted or duplicate files floating around in your Google storage. You’d be surprised how much space you can save.
